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Shapes of Imagination: Calculating in Coleridge's Magical Realm

George Stiny

Arts, design, architecture & planning

Shapes of Imagination: Calculating in Coleridge's Magical Realm

By George Stiny, professor of architecture

MIT Press · 2022

In this book, Stiny runs visual calculating in shape grammars through art and design - incorporating Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetic imagination and Oscar Wilde's corollary to see things as they aren't. Many assume that calculating limits art and design to suit computers, but shape grammars rely on seeing to prove otherwise. Rules that change what they see extend calculating to overtake what computers can do, in logic and with data and learning. Shape grammars bridge the divide between seeing and combinatoric play.

From Summer 2023 recommended reading from MIT (MIT News). Cover image via Google Books.